GS blue

Suz… Suuuz… Suzie, Listen… no wind… if we want to paddle, you have to get up NOW. A few moans and groans later the boats are in the water and another wonderful paddling adventure begins. We have a great little put-in site called Little Bay where we usually launch from when we don’t want to travel too far from home. The bay is sheltered from the open sea by strategically placed rocks which is a good sign that mother nature does like paddlers. Although our coast can be rather treacherous with huge waves capable of pulverizing most unsuspecting sea travelers, the conditions were near perfect on Saturday.

Voëlsteen(Bird Rock) is a island about 500m offshore that serves as breeding colony for many cormorants and gulls. This island is only accessible to strong swimmers or via boat so there are seldom any human disturbances. Voëlsteen is also home to a small family of Cape Fur Seals. Every time we paddle here we go visit these inquisitive creatures and get an update on how their family is growing. Mom is usually found sunbathing on the rocks while the little ones are playing in the protected little pools of the rocks. What usually starts as us studying them ends with them studying us. I often wonder what goes through their minds as they lie there staring at our every move. How odd we must look to them in our relatively clumsy sea crafts.

Cape Fur Seal just chilling :)

After a few minutes of “who’s studying who” we headed on down along the long stretch of beach called Blaauwberg(blue mountain). This beach is called aptly named due to the magnificent view of South Africa’s pride and joy, Table Mountain. This is the view that many tourists spend thousands of dollars, euros and pounds to see.

The reason for Blaauwberg's Name

Ok, now picture this, you paddling along peacefully enjoying the excellent conditions when suddenly you see something dart underneath you. Now I don’t care what you say, your immediate reaction is seldom one of excitement. Its more a case of all your bodily functions shutting down on you all at once, until that is, you realize that what had just passed is in fact a dolphin. In my case fear changed instantly into exhilaration and I could help but shout out to Suzaan “dolphin, dolphin”. Well I guess it’s a rather stupid reaction and that it more than likely will scare them away, but I was on autopilot at the time. No matter how many times I see these magnificent beings, every experience with them is special. Even though it’s a huge sea they will almost always pass close by you to see what your are up to and who knows what else they do in that split second of passing. Maybe they are even checking if you are as in touch with your telepathic ability as they are. You never know.

Needless to say the camera was immediately put on standby in the hope of another encounter. With the next encounter the dolphins did give a warning by surfacing ahead of us. As they darted passed, I snapped away a few shots, hoping to capture something and these are the results.

Dusky Dolphin minus a head

.... maybe next time

We were also graced with another well known visitor in our waters, the Mola Mola (sunfish). Now even though these creatures are relatively slow in comparison, I only managed to get the picture right on top of this blog. After Photoshop did an auto levels adjustment it came out looking kinda alien, I thought it suites the hole Encounters, Alien them so I had to use it. It’s another hard lesson to learn when photographing moving targets, don’t wait for a better shot than you already have, rather take more pictures and hope one is salvageable. There will be more opportunities though, as they tend to drift along with the warmer, jellyfish rich currents.

Unfortunately due to prior commitments we only managed to paddle for about 11km, if it were up to me, I probably would have paddled the whole day away in search of another encounter.